this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Virtually everything that they added to Foundation made the show good and all the stuff that's pulled from the books drags the rest down.
And it really only seems to be fans of the books who aren't able to separate the two works who hate Foundation. I think everyone I know who watched the shoe but didn't read the books loves it.
In this case, you might be the thing that needs to change, not the show they made.
The fact that book-readers don't like the TV show isn't some failure to conceptualise on their part - it's because Foundation is a below-average TV show and a terrible book adaptation. The Foundation series is an examination of the social and political forces that shape society on the scale of millions of people and hundreds of years. But none of the science and politics that underpins Foundation comes through in the TV adaption. In the books, Hari Seldon is just a scientist, but in the show he becomes more like magic wizard man\Jesus allegory, while Salvor Hardin (who is mostly a politician in the books) ends up as a low-rent space action hero.
The fact that the series doesn't directly follow the books isn't the problem, because a 1:1 adaption of the book probably wouldn't make for good TV, it would feel dated and dry. I generally like it when an adaption has a new, original spin on the material. The problem is, Foundation isn't a good show on its own terms, it's a shallow-but-flashy science fiction soap opera with thin characters and an overarching plot mostly driven by pointless mystery boxes and stupid coincidences. It never engages with the political and sociological ideas presented in the novels, but it also provides no new ideas to replace them. The whole experience feels empty and meaningless.
In your post, you don't just say that you like it, you're actually implying that you think the people who prefer the books are wrong, and that they have a lesser understanding of the material than you. So I ask you: what is the foundation TV show actually about?
Except most people who didn't read the books and most critics say it's a pretty good tv show.
So perhaps you're wrong and it's not the children this time?
See, I disagree. They ruined it with the stuff they added, and they completely changed the premise of the books. The books aren't about people, they're about predictions playing out over thousands of years. The show is about people, and not very believable or interesting ones at that.
And that predictions stuff is boring but the empire clones stuff is kind of interesting.
Regardless it's a good tv show. If you hadn't read the books you wouldn't care about the "predictions over thousands of years" stuff.
Yeah who cares about the original works! Everything is good as long as huge studios can piggy back off the name recognition from classic novels and make a bunch of money with their completely different story.
The original works still exist.
You can care about the originals and like the derivative works.
Recognizing that Foundation the TV show is a decent show does not take away from the books.
Saying that it's a bad show because it didn't stick to the source material is ONLY a you problem.
That wasn't my only criticism of the show, and I'm certainly not alone in my opinion of it. It's cool that you enjoyed it. They certainly put a lot of time and money into creating it. I didn't enjoy it for the reasons I've already given.